Toilets are our friends:)

I am not sure there is one woman on this planet who enjoys cleaning a toilet.  If there is I would like to meet them.  Yet, to have to clean something so disgusting is far better than not having one at all.  At least during the flu season.

When flu season arrives, toilets are our friends.  About 3 Christmas ago, we found out just how grateful we are for those porcelain pieces of furniture.

We had a family Christmas party at my sisters.   This is once when I can honestly say, those who weren’t there are the luckiest suckers on earth.

The family Christmas party was held just days before Christmas.  We have about 70 plus now in the extended family, but I believe at that time there were probably only 60 something and of those sixty I believe only 35 of us were there.  My husband and kids and I always have a Christmas Eve party.  I planned big, we had Chinese food and all kinds of goodies.  It was great fun until later that night one of my kids complained of not feeling well.

I hoped that it was just something passing so that their Christmas would not be ruined.  By the time we went to bed three children were sick.  We started dropping like flies people. Christmas morning welcomed the entire family having the flu.  The worst Christmas ever.  We barely managed to get packages opened between trips to the bathroom.

Most of us laid and moaned all day.  I began to wonder if some of my cooking had given us all food poisoning, until I started calling around and getting calls from the family.  What we realized is that within a five-day period 26 of the 35 people had the flu.  It nearly took out the entire family.  We then thought that perhaps we ate something at the party that gave us food poisoning.  We could not find a common denominator.  I do believe to this date nothing has made me sicker except for morning sickness.

When  every Christmas rolls around at least one child tells me that they never want to see Chinese food again.  It is not what made everyone sick, but everyone remembers what it is like revisiting that meal over and over again.  I have always been one that hardly ever throws up.  I remember the few times I have it has been with a migraine combined with motion sickness.  Other than that, morning sickness with my first child for 5 months was the only puking I have done.

Up until this Christmas day, I had not thrown up for 15 years.  I broke that record and made up for all those years in 6 days.  None of us could eat for about two weeks.  It was horrible.

I bring this up because I think there should be laws that only person can get the flu at a time in a family.  I don’t know who to talk to about this, but it is unfair for a mother to have to deal with.  I came to this conclusion last night while I was up most of the night with two sons suffering from the flu.  It is going on three days now and neither one of them has slept for the last two nights because of the attachment they have with “John”.

I breathe a sign of relief that we made it past Christmas before this hit, but now I await to see how many of us get it.  Unfortunately when Mom gets sick I still have to be mom.  No quitting for me.  I am keeping my distance and crossing my fingers.

So the next time you mumble under your breath while elbow deep into the toilet, remember what it would be like if you didn’t have one and what you would have to clean up.  Puts everything into perspective, I say.

Happy New Year…Please pass the Ibuprofin!

So with yesterday being the last day before everyone went back to school, we wracked our brains trying to find something to do as our last “hurrah”.  After a lot of thoughtful contemplation we decided to have a Nerf gun war.  Feeling like I do today, I wish I wouldn’t have suggested it. We got all of the guns and ammo together and found a place for the war.  We sat up the bunkers and made up teams.  After the first round we decided that the teams weren’t working for us so it suddenly became a “free-for-all”. I realized after about 45 minutes why they suggest you wear protective eyewear.  I was hit in the face 4 times.  I nailed my son right between the eyes once and just as he turned around his sister shot him in the forehead.  Ears were impaled, and heads were shot.  Nothing was sacred people, nothing. One thing that has been a problem with me for years is that if I get laughing, I quickly become immobilized.  I lose all strength in the body and can do nothing to protect myself.  This is a huge weakness of mine and it has been used against me many times. Yesterday was no exception. Some of the Nerf ammo has velcro on one end.  I shot my daughter in the butt and the ammo was just hanging there.  She could not deny I hit her, the proof was there waving to the world. I started laughing so hard that I couldn’t pull it together.  In my moment of weakness, my son shot and hit me in the tooth.  That was it.  I fell to the ground unable to move because I was laughing so hard, tears flowing.  It took me a good 10 minutes to get myself back in the game. Not once was I able to be “King of the Ring”.  I never could get everyone out so that I was the last person standing.  I seriously need to brush up on my skills.  I have to admit I pwned on loading.  I could load and shoot faster than you can say “Bob’s Yer Uncle”.  I had to, I was an easy target for everyone, which pretty much sucked. It has been decided that the war must have a second, third and fourth round at least.  I have to admit, despite the pain…it was pretty fun.  Next time…game on.  I am showing up looking like Rambo.  There will be NO survivors. Someday I will have to decide to grow up…but today is not that day.

True Meaning of Christmas

As I look back on my most memorable Christmas’, the ones I remember are the most simplest ones.  The years that we have struggled and some dear “Angel” has come to our rescue.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times that has happened.

One year we started a family tradition of giving each brother a sister a tree ornament.  I remember the time and effort that was put into some of those.  My sister had handmade hers and they were beautiful. I cherished these ornaments.  I thought of each one of my brothers, sisters and in-laws as I would put those on the tree.  It became especially important to me after the death of my mother.  Family became the most important thing to me.

This particular year stands out to me as one of the most memorable.  We used to keep our tree and ornaments in our garage because we didn’t have enough room in the house.  As tradition, we always put up the tree on Thanksgiving or the day after.  I had my husband go out to the garage and bring out my box of beautiful ornaments.  When he came into the house the look on his face caused me alarm.  Our tree and ornaments had been invested with mice.  We live on a farm, so it is normal to have mice all over but for some particular reason this year was worse than previous years.

When I opened the boxes, I realized that nothing was salvageable.  My first response was tears.  All of the hard work that had gone into those ornaments from my family, plus all of the handmade ones my children had made for me came rushing to my memory so fast that it was overwhelming.  I was devastated.  They weren’t just ornaments, they were family memories.  After the tears passed, then came the thought of how are we going to have a tree this year.  My husband had been unemployed, his father had recently passed away and it had been a hard year financially.   We eventually found a small fake tree and decided that it was going to have to do.  We would just find something else for ornaments.

One night as we pulled into our home, I noticed a big box sitting on our back porch.  We all walked cautiously toward it not knowing why it was there and what was in it.  As I slowly opened the box, inside lay ornament after ornament.  No name, no nothing to identify the giver.  Tears filled my eyes as I looked at those ornaments.  No, they were not the handmade memories I had cried over a few days ago, but they were memories of the love I felt for this stranger who had helped make my kids Christmas a special one.

This was not the only time we have felt the love of our Father in Heaven through special people that we have in our lives.  Some we know, some we don’t.  The giving did not stop at that year.  One year we found a beautiful handmade quilt on our front porch.  No name, nothing to identify the giver only the two sets of footprints left in the snow; one big, one small.  I looked at those prints and thought to myself, someone is teaching a child the importance of giving service to another.  I have cherished that blanket ever since.  I know it had to have taken hours to make and I was overwhelmed that someone would spend that much time on a gift for us.  As we knelt in family prayer that night, we thanked our Heavenly Father for another “Angel” that was now part of our Christmas memories.

Another year of hardship, we found money taped to our front door.  A simple message of “Hope you have a merry Christmas” was all that was written on it.  As I look back on these moments, there is nothing I can do to pay these dear souls back.  We still don’t know who some of these acts of service have come from, but it instilled in us a greater desire to serve others.  So each year the “Rees” elves try to do something to make someone else’s Christmas one to remember.  We never tell who, what, where or when; that takes the fun out of it.  Today a complete stranger will hopefully feel the Spirit of Christmas from some “Angels” who are paying it forward and being the hands of a loving Father in Heaven who knows all.  He knows our sufferings and our joy and always places people in our  lives at the right time and the right place to ease that suffering.  This is going to be fun!

Merry Christmas and may you remember the blessings that you have this Christmas season and pay it forward.  This is what true happiness is all about!

Why did you have to see that?

My Mother, may she rest in peace, had an immaculate home.  Nothing ever out of place.  It was not always like that.  There were seven kids and she had her moments.  I remember a story she told of getting a call that someone was coming over and the house was a mess.  She had to “cram for the examine” so to speak before the company arrived.  She found the closest room to get rid of things and stuffed everything inside.  I guess that the company complimented her on how well she kept the house up with so many little kids.  This particlular incident made my mother into the “Clean House Nazi”.  She taught us kids to be clean, neat and organized.  I used to be, until I had children.

I know there would be days that if she saw my home she would roll over in her grave.  She is probably looking down on me from Heaven telling to pull it together.

I do know that over the years of having kids, I have gained a lot of patience and I tolerate more than perhaps what I should. Case in point:  A couple of months ago, we bought an electric scooter from a thrift store to help save gas.  It is mostly for the kids to get to their friends house, etc.  My son came flying through my kitchen on it the other day, almost running me over.  I just looked at him with that look that says, “Really?”.  He informs me that there aren’t many mother’s who allow their children to drive the scooter through the house.  What I didn’t tell him is that He has taught me more patience than my other children.

Well, this lead to a choice that I made that should have put me in the child category instead of parent category.  I walked through my house and saw the scooter plugged in.  I decided to climb aboard and just sit on it.  Then the thought occured to me that perhaps one of my dogs would love a ride on this thing.

I called one of them and stuck it on the foot rest and gassed it.  I didn’t want her jumping off while I was going.  Well….that was a stupid thought, because she did jump off.  Out of fear of smashing her flat, I swerved and lost control of the scooter, flew down the hall and into my daughter’s bedroom hitting her keyboard and almost knocking it onto the floor.  In the panic of everything, I forgot it had brakes.

I wish I would have been alone when this happened, but my 19 year old daughter was in her room next to the room I went plowing through.  According to her…”All I saw was legs flailing and heard screaming”.  Dang it.  I didn’t want an eyewitness to this at all.  Not even sure what possessed me to try it to begin with.  It goes about 15 mph.  I probably topped off at 17 through the hall judging by how long it took me to stop and how much damage I did.

I won’t even begin to explain why I attempted this.  I don’t even have the answer for that.

PWNED!!

I am laughing so hard right now, so laughing!!!  So the other day, my kids were going to play a video game.  I asked them what they were going to play.  Well, I could tell by the way my son was covering that he did not want me playing the game with them.  So he started telling me it was NHL, which I don’t like playing because I can’t figure out the controls.  Anyway, I realized it was Black Ops and they did not want me playing because my son told me that, “All you want to do is shoot the grass, the fence and shoot smiley faces into buildings”.  O.K. So I don’t like shooting people and the game wouldn’t even be in the house if it wasn’t for it being a gift that someone gave one of my kids.  Anyway, we have had some fun playing it with all the bad stuff turned off.

“Well”, I said.  Disgusted in their observance of me.  So I gave them grief all night because they wouldn’t let me play.  Of course it was all in fun giving them so much grief over it.  All of this whole conversation and that particular day came back to smack my sons in the face today.

They wanted to play WWE today.  They decided it was O.K. for mom to play if she wanted.  I don’t know the controls….I just punch whatever I want and hope it works.  So we got into this wrestling match and I started pwning these two boys like none other.  Well I couldn’t stop laughing because I was pushing all the buttons I could and was seriously beating the heck out of the two of them without knowing what I was doing.  Well there comes a time during the match that your players signature move can be used.  Mine came up and I just happened to see it.  So I asked my son what button to push so I could use it.  He tells me which one to use and unbeknowns to any of us,  it was the pinning move.  I totally won!  My son was dying because he had told me how to use the move not knowing it would lead me to winning the game.  I was laughing so hard and my sons were stunned.  STUNNED!

They wanted a rematch.  So I picked my player again, Big Daddy V, (he and I are home boys now)  because I had so much luck with him and we commenced to wrestling.  My sons were not holding back on me this time.  I was getting double teamed, smacked with tables, smacked with chairs, smacked with wooden poles with barbed wire.  You name it.  They told me that they showed me too much sympathy the first game and they weren’t doing it this game.  That is pretty low people.

Fine, so I kept playing my whole haphazard way and found that the more buttons I pushed at once the better the chances I had of getting out of moves and I actually could do some serious beating.  Well the “noob” was able to pin down one of the boys after about 20 minutes of wrestling and I was winning…in a panic my  son unplugged the controller so I couldn’t win again.  Too late….I had won.

This is one of the most momentous moments in my life.  The look on their faces…..priceless.  My son said that no one better ever find out that they got pwned by their mother in WWE.  That that would pretty much be the end of their manly existence as they knew it.

I am laughing so hard right now.  Of course, that was my que to get out while the getting was good.  I can’t beat them in any other game, but I now have bragging rights tonight!  I am the queen of WWE!!!

Queen of “Brain Farts”

There are times when I do things that I really wonder what I am thinking when I decided to do it.  Today I did something that I know a forty+ year old woman probably should have thought completely through before attempting.

I am a true believer in playing with my kids.  I will try a lot of things and perhaps some that I shouldn’t.  I have done more things as a mother than I never did as a teen.  I believe in being involved in my kids’ life so I know what their likes and dislikes are.  My kids are quite varied in the things they like to do.  So I have done a few things that perhaps some parents wouldn’t do.

I have played video games with my boys because that is like what they do.  I do have to ask what the controls do each time.  But I have been banned from Modern Warfare because my sons don’t like the idea that I prefer shooting the vending machines, cash registers, condiments, beagles and TV’s.  I get a weird thrill out of that.  My son’s don’t appreciate it.  I am the queen of Battlefront.  I hold the headshot record. Yesssss!

I live in Utah.  As a youngster, I loved tubing, skiing, ice skating and other various winter sports.  I usually ended up getting hurt because of stupid ideas.  The last time I went skiing (30 years) I ran a girl over and decided that was not the profession for me.  Then I tried ice skating earlier this year for the first time after 30 years.  I nearly took out a baby in a stroller. Nearly got banned from the ice rink after that.  When I was younger my brother had built a snowmobile out of wood and skis.  He then got my brother, sister and I to go to the tubing hill with him.  He welded the skis on to the box thus making this thing heavier than an ox.  It took all four of us to get the thing up the hill.  It was heavy to get much speed, so we built a jump at the bottom of the hill and then would have my brother lay on the other side for us to try to jump him.   We could have killed him.  This was not smart, nor was it my idea.  My brother almost sent a lot of us to the “other side” with his hairbrained ideas.  I usually liked trying a lot of things as a youth because I could bounce back physically better if I a happened to get injured.  That doesn’t happen as much as I am more “mature”.  The old body gets hammered a lot easier.

In comes today’s complete brain fart.  My son has been wanting a Banshee Bungi.  If you don’t know what that is, it is a stretchable rope thing that you stretch out for someone to hold to the other end.  It launches said person across the lawn or other various other things at a pretty good rate of speed.  Well yesterday we got 10 inches of snowed dumped on us.  So my son has been chomping at the bit to get out on the snowboard.  Since we don’t have a lot of snow on the hilly areas, it isn’t good for snow activities so today he calls his buddy who owns one.  This is the first time my son tried it out even though he has been wanting one for months.

At  some point, they needed an extra person to help stretch the bungi because of how “strong” I volunteered (Not).  Anyway, it looked pretty fun.  I have never snowboarded, I used to skateboard in elementary school and true to form..did some pretty stupid things.  I had good balance.  It isn’t like that now.  The southerly gravitational pull that starts occurring at age 35 does something to the equilibrium.  After helping these boys a few times, I decided I wanted to try.  When I first stepped into the board that should have been a clue.  Did I stop there?…heck no!  I had to make a complete fool of myself before quitting.

I grabbed the rope and not only had I never been on a snowboard, but I was actually going to try the jump that had been built.  Snowplow is the only word that comes to mind that would describe my move.  I am not talking about the skiing “snowplow”  I am talking about the ones that go up and down the road.  I was wearing a snowsuit and I hit so hard I actually found snow in my pant pockets.  I nearly ate the entire path.  I won’t need a drink of water for weeks.  So what happens?  I get up and am told by my son and his friend to try it again.  Not sure if it was because they wanted to see me eat it again or what.  I had set the goal to go further than the original two feet.  I probably made three feet the second time before burying myself three feet under.  I have parts that are slowly starting to stiffen up.  Someday I might actually grow up and find these activities too much, but then what would I give my children to laugh about right?

Reaching The Lowest of Lows

So my morning has been a memorable one.  It is funny how one thing going wrong (i.e. alarm not going off) can lead to poor choices.

I woke to my alarm this morning realizing that my daughter, who should have been up an hour before me, was not up.  Panic set in and I flew out of bed to go get her up.  This one incident led to a choice I had to make this morning that I never care to make again.

Because I have teen daughters, I pretty much can tell when I can push things with them or not.  This morning was definitely a NOT.

My sons have to be on the bus at 6:50 a.m.  I have to be to school at 7:00 a.m.  My daughter is supposed to be to school at 6:30 and my other daughter has to be to work at 8:00.  So you see how one little thing go wrong in my morning and it is a disaster.

I got my sons fed and my daughter was still in MY shower, so I was forced to used the kid’s bathroom to shower.  I figured if I didn’t shower before the boys got on the bus, there was no way I was going to make it to school on time.  So I hurried and jumped into the shower in the kid’s bathroom without really assessing the situation like I should have.  I saw bottles of soap in there, but didn’t check to see if they were full.

In mid shower I realized I had no soap or shampoo.  This is bad people, real bad.  There was one bottle of soap in there and it was my only choice.  I knew given the situation of my daughter that there was no way I was getting soap out of my bathroom.  I knew she would not let my sons in there and my other daughter was still in bed.

I sat there looking at this bottle trying to pick my brain on how I got in this situation.  I finally realized I had no choice but to use this soap.  It was dog shampoo people.  Dog shampoo.  Is this what I have been lowered to in my own home?

It was supposed to be green apple scented…it just didn’t smell like green apple.  It may smell good on a dog, but it don’t on people.  I hurried and used it and got out, smelling that stuff everywhere I went.  No amount of perfume, hairspray or hair product could get rid of that smell.  Maybe it was more of a mental thing than anything else, knowing I had used dog shampoo.  I don’t know.

Even though this is supposed to give dogs shiny coats….does not do anything for people “coats”.  My hair looks like a cat has ratted it up and nested in it. It is so out of control.

Today I will avoid all eye contact with anyone thus avoiding any stares at this rug on my head and hope that no one can smell the weird fermented apple smell coming off of me. 

The only good thing that has come from this….It was anti-bacterial.  So I guess I just took care of the “cooties” that I was informed I had when I was in fourth grade.

Yuck, yuck, yuck!

Clubbing of the Somnambulator (Sleepwalker)

I met my lifetime quota for getting creeped out last night.  Needless to say, I have been up since 4:00 a.m. because I could not even begin to close my eyes after the following happened.

My husband works graveyard every four weeks.  He happened to start it this week.  I really hate it, but it is a job what do you do.  Because of him being gone at nights, I have a baseball bat, Walther, taser and various other items within arms reach of the bed.  Call me paranoid….

I have a daughter that gets up early for school because she has to be there by 6:30.  When my husband works day shift, he leaves around 4:00 a.m.  I am kind of used to hearing noises early and a lot of times it wakes me up.  My inner clock is still screwed up from daylight savings time, so I have been waking up an hour before my alarm clock goes off.  This morning, I was kind of waking up when I heard someone walking across the kitchen floor.

My daughter usually turns on every light in the house because she doesn’t like the dark.  She gets that from me.  Anyway, I could tell through my closed eyes that no lights were on.  I then heard the floor squeak at the bottom of my bed.  I had left a laundry basket full of towels there and thought my daughter was getting one to get in the shower.  My daughter’s dog that happened to be on my bed looked up but didn’t do anything. I waited for the light to come on and waited and waited.  I opened my eyes but didn’t look directly at the foot of my bed.  I had a light on my phone flashing in the corner of the room and looked at it to see if I could see a reflection.  I saw nothing.

About 3 minutes later, I felt the person walk past by bed and out of my room.  I lay there with my heart racing and didn’t dare move.  I finally turned over to see the clock to see if it was my daughter and it was too early for her to be up.  I then heard a weird noise that sounded like a cell phone ringer of some sort.  I stayed in bed for about 10 minutes, creeped out way more than I wanted to be.  Finally I grabbed my bat for the sake of protecting my sleeping  children and started through the house to see if someone was in it.

I tiptoed quietly hugging the walls so as not to be seen or make the floor squeak to alert someone to my presence.   I slowly checked all the rooms to find all of my children sound asleep.  I stood in the kitchen with the bat drawn wondering who in the heck…..?

As I turned to go back to my room, I ran smack into a chair that I could not see in the dark.  So whoever came through my kitchen missed the chair in the dark, but I did not.  Typical…  Gave myself a good knot on the shin.  I could not go back to sleep to save my life.  I was so freaked out.

When it came time to get everyone up, including my daughter whose alarm did not go off,  it was 20 questions time.  I was asking everyone who was walking through the house in the dark because they nearly got the carp beat out of them with the bat.  No one knows anything.  No one heard anything, no one remembers anything……..weird.   Really weird….

I have a son that is known to sleep walk, but he also sleeps with one of the dogs who usually comes running out of the room the minute his door is open.  But no dog to be seen anywhere.  Baffles the mind.  Hope I can sleep tonight.

Life Lessons Learned at Wal-Mart

I know a lot of people have seen the website “The People of Wal-Mart”.  I have lived “The People of Wal-Mart”.  The things I have seen in this store……

I have wondered what it is that attracts people like that and what makes them think that they can wear what they wear in public.  There should be laws about this kind of stuff.

My children make me laugh all the time.  Somethings I probably shouldn’t laugh at.  I try hard not to, but sometimes the things they say just come from out of nowhere without any type of warning they are coming.  Take for instance one day we were at our local Wal-Mart and there was gal wearing a pair of sweats with “PINK” stamped across the butt.   All of a sudden my kids were laughing extremely loud and uncontrollably.  To this day no one will admit who it was that noticed this first, but this girl had a serious wedgy.  Unfortunately for her, the “N” in the word “PINK” was stuck in the wedgy thus creating the new word “PIK”.  At this point we had to quickly move to another area of the store before dying of laughter in front of the poor girl.  I wanted to help, but it was complicated.

Then there was the day that we were in the food department and some people were there with their dog.  If this dog was a “service” dog, it was not marked in any way.  It was a Labrador.  I happened to look out of the corner of my eye and noticed that the couple had stopped and the lady was walking back down to where they had previously been.  I know this because as in the story of Hansel and Gretel…their dog had left a trail of dog poop to find its way back to the meat department.  This was messed up on many levels and in fact, I could not make myself buy any food. I had to leave.  Just wrong…just wrong.

Another Wal-Mart moment was walking past the checkout and my son starts laughing.  I couldn’t hear him, but I could feel him bumping up against me.  I turned to see what the heck was going on and he pointed in the other direction….If there was a plumber’s crack olympics….hands down this guy would have taken the gold.  I ask myself…”Can they not feel the draft?”

I remember seeing a woman one day that baffles me still to this day.  I cannot for the life of me figure out how this woman got her hair to do what it was doing.  It was standing up straight like a buzz cut only the hair was longer than what a buzz would have been and the ends were grouped in small bunches and had a small curl on top.  It was the weirdest hair do I have ever seen.

One of the most disturbing things I have ever seen, that may have actually warranted a call to the “Perv” cops.  My son and I were shopping for some socks in the men’s department.  We happened over toward an area where there were belts, etc.  and there stood this guy wearing a pair of shorts, he had removed his shirt and was looking around suspiciously.  He actually looked like he had started removing his shorts.  I thought for sure that my son and I were going to get exposed to something that we didn’t want to see, so I turned grabbing my kid and headed the opposite direction as fast as I could.  This one still disturbs me to this day.

Then one day, I got run over by a lady who was driving one of those motorized carts.  It wouldn’t have been so bad except that she didn’t say sorry or anything. She was not looking at all where she was going.  Glad I didn’t go all the way down to the ground.  That would have been awkward.  Some people should have to take a course before getting into one of these.

Then there was the day that a kid perhaps 9 years old came ripping through the ladies department on one of those carts going as fast as he could while laughing and looking behind him.  Soon his sister appeared yelling at him that “Mom was going to kill him if he didn’t stop and return the cart.  That was a moment that I thought, “I am so glad that is not my son”.

All I can learn from all of these experiences is that I have spent waaayyy too much time at Wal-Mart.  I am near having to pay my children to go to that store with me.  They all hate it.  If you think that you are weird in any way, go to Wal-Mart you will soon find that you are not as weird as you might think or perhaps you are not alone in this vast world of odd ducks.

Missing

Lately my heart has been heavy hearing about all of the children that are going missing.  I cannot even begin to feel what these parents are going through.  I made this video and right after I posted it, another 11-year-old girl was on the news.  Missing after leaving school.  Perhaps some comfort can be found in knowing that where ever these kids are and whatever has happened or is happening to them, God is with them.  He feels the sorrow these parents are feeling and I am sure He has shed many tears for these families.

As a mother, this is one of my worst nightmares.  I pray for these families.